Norfolk physician assistant ‘an angel’
Nadine Danaher of David City is now one-year cancer-free — and counting.
And she has a former University of Nebraska Medical Center physician assistant student — now working at Faith Regional Physician Services in Norfolk — to thank.
Danaher calls Lindsay Peterson her “angel.”
The relationship is mutual as Peterson says, “I think about Nadine a lot.”
They met in an exam room in David City. Danaher, 89, went to the clinic to check on a cough. Peterson, as a UNMC physician assistant student on rotation at Witter Family Medicine, conducted the exam.
She was extra thorough — a student excited to work with real patients — and to do an exam just as she was taught. As part of the exam, she found a lesion on Danaher’s tongue.
“We saw that mass,” Peterson said. “We didn’t know what it was. We knew we needed to send her on.”
She called in one of her preceptors, physician assistant Jim Witter, and they got the ball rolling.
No one had noticed anything on a recent dental visit. No one had seen anything on any other trips to the clinic.
But Peterson, the intrepid student, made a crucial catch.